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lpress (707742) writes "A second delegation from Google is in Cuba and they have visited two important technical universities and some of Cuba's Youth Computer Clubs. The US government is now allowing us to import goods produced by Cuban entrepreneurs, Might we soon be seeing Cuban apps in the Google Play store or the stores of Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and anyone else selling software online?"

lpress (707742) writes "In an effort to support Cuba's nascent private sector, the Treasury Department announced on Friday that Americans can now import goods and services produced by “independent Cuban entrepreneurs.” Will the Cuban government allow that? Cuba is a communist nation, but they have a list of 201 job categories in which self-employment is permitted. Most of those jobs are goofy things like magician and pedal-taxi driver, but one is not – computer programmer. Will the Castro regime let private individuals and organizations export software and software services to the United States and the rest of the world?"

They still have some international satellite connectivity in addition to the undersea cable, but the real need is not for international connectivity but domestic access. In the short run, satellite and terrestrial wireless could make a big difference at low cost if the Cuban government were willing.

lpress (707742) writes "RAND Corporation was formed after World War II to do research and development for the Air Force. Perhaps the first "think tank," RAND was instrumental in many computer science developments. They did important early work on communication satellites, artificial intelligence and operations research and RAND's JOHNNIAC was one of the first stored program (Von Neumann architecture) research computers. IPL, the first list processing language, the SIMSCRIPT simulation programming language and JOSS, one of the first interactive time-sharing systems, were developed at RAND. The RAND tablet was the great grandfather of the iPad and its graphical input language (GRAIL) featured object-oriented drawing and character recognition. Paul Baran's work on the design and feasibility of large, distributed, packet-switched networks was RAND's most important theoretical work — leading to the ARPANET.

In 1957, RAND spun off its research division, creating the System Development Corporation (SDC) to build the SAGE air-defense system. SAGE was the first computer network and a huge project that trained most of the system programmers in the US. Those programmers invented many programming and project management techniques and went on to productive careers. SDC also developed the most advanced time-sharing and software development system of its time, which was used in dozens of man-machine research projects."

lpress (707742) writes "In the early 1990s, cellular pioneer Craig McCaw, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal founded Teledesic with the intention of providing global Internet connectivity using low-earth orbit satellites. The satellite and launch technology were not good enough and the company failed. Today, entrepreneurs Elon Musk (launch technology) and Greg Wyler (satellite technology) are working on a constellation of 700 low-earth orbit satellites to provide Internet connectivity to rural areas and developing nations and Google has several related projects. Will they realize Teledesic's 1990 vision using 2020 technology?"

In the days of pre and early-Internet networking, Americans were welcome as visitors to Cuba's National Center of Automated Data Exchange, the organization responsible for Cuban networking at that time, and at Cuban computer science conferences. Cubans, Americans and others worked side by side in the Internet Society Developing Nation Workshops and Conferences. We were not politicians seeking power or representatives of corporations seeking monopoly profits, but technicians and others who believed that computer networks were fascinating and held great potential for improving the world."

lpress (707742) writes "I tested CBS All Access video streaming. It has technical problems, which will be resolved, but I will still pass because they show commercials in addition to a $5.99 per month fee. Eventually, we will all cut the cord and have a choice of viewing modes — on-demand versus scheduled and with and without commercials — but don't expect your monthly bill to drop as long as our ISPs are monopolies or oligopolies."

lpress (707742) writes "Companies like Apple and Google face complex pricing decisions since they are in "two-sided" markets and telecommunication policy makers need to find regulatory strategies that will incent network companies to invest, while keeping end user prices low. Tirole has advice for both. European regulators have heeded his advice, but not those of the US.

lpress (707742) writes "The domain name ebola.com is for sale. In the meantime, the folks who own it are redirecting to ebola.org, where you can read frightening articles and purchase BHT, a nutritional supplement that could help with ebola. I don't know which is more depressing — the fact that someone would try to exploit the ebola epidemic this way or that there are enough people who would pay for BHT to fend off ebola to make squatting on disease domain names a profitable business."

At that high level, the line between corporations and the government becomes blurry, no matter which country you live in. Just look at Standard Oil, Boeing, Halliburton... The list goes on.

For sure, but are there differences in degree? For example, in Chinese dominated Singapore, the government is an explicit shareholder. I wonder if anyone has done a study of explicit ownership of stock by US companies --- e. g., does Haliburton own stock in Standard Oil?